Prologue: Turn of an era

Head of DMLE Harry Potter was pacing around in his office. There were a few pictures of him, Ginny and their children on the desk, with their home on the background.

Behind Harry, there was a large bookshelf filled with various books on restricted knowledge, more than half of it was dark magic and rituals.

Harry was pacing back and forth, too bored to brush up his knowledge and too irritated to sit still and wait for something, anything to happen.

For the past month, the biggest thing that had happened was a kid getting caught on video while performing Accidental Magic. The smartphone of the person responsible for uploading it had been confiscated and the video on it erased and the person obliviated. They later found themselves salivating over the pictures of various delicacies they had supposedly taken instead.

The official story was that it was a clip that didn't make the cut in a superhero movie. A few tech-wizards had even managed to weave compulsions into the video material. Every Muggle that saw the clip after it had been doctored felt like they were quite clever for figuring out what movie the clip would've been a part of.

Suddenly, there was a knock on his door.

"Enter!", Harry said with a hopeful voice. Anything was better than wearing a path into the carpet.

A wizard, one of the Aurors opened the door and reported while slightly panting: "Sir, another one has just opened up. The Magizoologists have already apparated there and ten Aurors are providing security."

Harry cocked an eyebrow and said: "Ten Aurors? I think that's not enough, I should go there personally. Keep an eye on my office while I'm gone."

A few moments later, Harry had gone to the nearest location with Portkey, provided by the logistics department.

After two minutes of walking at a brisk pace, he had already reached an area where fourteen people had gathered. The Aurors were pointing their wands at what looked like a shimmering silvery crack suspended mid-air and the Magizoologists had parchment, inkwells and quills floating in air beside them, ready to take notes as soon as they started speaking.

"What's the situation?", Harry asked when he arrived.

"Nothing came through yet, Sir. The ICW crack taskforce has been notified and they've said they'd send someone over to deal with it. We were told to keep an eye on it until then."

As if waiting for the man to stop speaking, the crack widened and with a burst of bright light, a humanoid figure stepped through.

Harry flicked his wand into his hand and yelled: "Freeze! Hands up!"

In an instant, the figure moved at an inhuman speed and within the blink of an eye, two of the Magizoologists crumpled onto the ground, motionless.

Stunners were flying through the air, yet every single one of them only threw small amounts of dirt into the air after hitting the ground.

"Immobulus!", Harry chanted.

A translucent shockwave spread out from the tip of his wand and the dirt that was thrown in air by the stunners became suspended, as if time had stopped. Even a bird that had been flying in the distance stood still midair.

Yet, one of the Aurors slumped onto the ground this time, his wand nowhere to be seen. A moment later, the same fate struck another one, and then another. Now, even the figure of that humanoid couldn't be seen.

"Revelio!", one of the Aurors shouted while his eyes were darting from one side to the other. The remaining Aurors and Harry formed a tight circle, their backs touching.

The blinding light that had been emanating from the crack finally died down and at the same time, the figure was revealed once more.

It was a dark-skinned humanoid around four feet tall, a wand in a hand. That was all Harry could see before it punched him in the gut so hard he crashed into the wizard behind him and they both toppled over. Harry used his free left hand to cast a depulsion charm at the ground and was back on his feet an instant later.

The immobilizing charm seemed to be taking its toll on the stranger, as it was slowing down noticeably.

Harry sent a barrage of stunners at the assailant, hoping to take them down for questioning, as it seemed that he was dealing with an intelligent being.

There were only four Aurors left standing by that point, and the stunners started hitting the being, but whether Harry hit its arms, head or chest, the stunners just bounced off.

'There's no fucking way, right? There aren't that many beasts with magic resistance that high, and those scales don't look like they came from a Basilisk. Is it a failed Dragon Animagus?'

Seeing that direct attacks were not getting him anywhere, Harry used the Incarcerous spell, and a rope appeared around the assailant, causing them to trip and fall to the ground as the bindings tightened. Yet, an instant later, the rope had snapped in multiple places and the stranger was back on its feet, already rushing at Harry.

A moment later, Harry was blinded by a flurry of multi-colored sparks aimed straight at his face. No matter how much he tried to dodge out of their way, the sparks seemed to follow him around.

When Harry's vision finally cleared, he found his own wand pointed at him from six feet away.

Harry was finally able to get a good look at the assailant. It had vertical slit-like pupils and facial features that were hidden by hard-looking scales. Both of its arms were covered in scales up to its elbows, as if the being was the result of a failed reptile Animagus transformation.

'Stay calm. It looks like it wants something.', Harry thought to himself.

"What year is it?", the being asked in a hoarse growl.

Harry just stared at the being for a while. That question had been the last thing he'd expected.

"I asked, what year is it?", the being repeated. Harry assumed that it was a male, due to the tone of that growl being a bit boyish.

"Listen, kid. There's no need for violence and threats, so just put the wand down." Harry said, his voice not faltering a single bit.

"Pointy stick says it's you that should listen and answer. What year is it?", came a growl, accompanied by a severing charm that cut deeply into Harry's arm.

"It's 2022. Are you happy now?"

The young man? in front of Harry let out a feral growl and said: "Shit, it's way off. Tell me, have you heard of Charles or Gaude Vywin?"

"No, but I can look them up if you let me."

The beast-man exclaimed: "Bloody fucking hell! I still haven't cracked the pattern! I hope I'll never see you again."

He then took one of the gadgets off his belt and pushed a few buttons. Soon, the crack started widening and once it was wide enough, the being stepped through it.

Harry shook his head, still sitting on the ground, not sure what to think about what had just transpired.

A few of the men scattered on the ground started moving again, holding the backs of their heads.

However, barely ten seconds had passed before the crack lit up with bright radiance once again, and the silhouette of a humanoid of a similar height to the previous one could be seen.

A moment later, Harry found a wand pointed at his chest one more. He would've been unsure if it was the same one, yet it was once again his own wand he was staring down.

The being suddenly retracted the wand and his scales retreated into his skin, revealing the face of a child that looked like he belonged in the second grade at best.

"Long time no see. What happened to you?", the boy asked while staring at the wound on Harry's arm.

"You did!", Harry said, glaring at the boy whose face seemed to say that he was innocent of any wrongdoings.

"Wasn't that around two months ago? Don't tell me you heal really slowly? Could've at least gotten a change of clothes."

"It's hasn't been a minute since you left."

The boy sat down on the ground and fidgeted on a gadget that was a lot bulkier than the previous one had been. His face was scrunched in displeasure as he spoke: "I really fucking hate time-travel. Especially through those shitty cracks. You never know where you end up before you go through. Here I was, hoping I'd figure out the pattern and get home free."

It was only then that Harry noticed something significantly different about the boy, other than the lack of scales.

"What happened to your arm?"

The boy looked at his left arm, or what was left of it. There was only a few inches of a stump past the elbow.

"Oh, that? Got infected with a really nasty curse, had to cut it off. Put a stop to the curse, but no potion could grow it back. I'll have to look into prosthetics once I get home.", the boy replied while carving runes and patterns into a large Wardstone.

Harry was wondering why people who got their arm cursed would elect to sever it instead of looking for more conventional solutions, such as using a potion to keep it at bay. Even Dumbledore had elected for dismemberment after he had caught the withering curse from the ring.

After a while, the boy returned Harry's wand and said: "Watch my back, I'll take a quick nap."

The boy then touched the Wardstone and suddenly both disappeared from sight.

"Revelio!", Harry tired, but other than an extremely faint and short-lived shimmer in the air, nothing happened.

'With this, why do you still need me to watch your back?', Harry thought to himself.

A few minutes later, a person in a suit of futuristic-looking armor walked up to Harry.

"Any invaders?", a synthetic voice asked.

"No, not really.", Harry replied with the slightest hint of worry in his voice. He knew well that anything that came through a crack and was discovered by one of those armor-wearing people would be incinerated without a question.

The armor-wearing person took out a canister of some kind with a nozzle attached to it. They then pushed the nozzle against the crack and pulled the trigger, causing a foam-like substance to come out.

The foam seemed to seep into the crack and the crack started closing, not leaving even a trace behind.

'The kid's going to be pissed if he planned to go through this one again. I hope he won't take it out on me this time.'

Once the crack was completely sealed, the armored individual disapparated, leaving Harry to tend to his downed subordinates. Now that he had his wand, it was actually quite simple and they were back on their feet after a simple spell.

Harry waited for half an hour to see if the boy would appear again, but he never did. Finally, Harry returned to his office.

Two days later, Harry got the report of an unregistered boy asking for a very specific wand from Ollivander's and leaving right after he was refused due to not having the proper documentation.

---

Harry was reading the tenth after-action report of the day. His hand subconsciously reached for the high-performance Time-Turner, wanting to return to the peaceful days of the past. In the end, however, he climbed into a trunk that contained an auxiliary office where the paperwork had been waiting for him since morning and turned time back to just after he'd left it. He sat down, took a few potions for the exhaustion and got to work once more.

Harry had even gone so far as to deliver some of the paperwork to his more bored self from a month ago, that was how far back he was willing to go.

However, Harry was able to only work for a few hours before something unexpected happened. Different from how it had been on his first way around, there was a knock on the door and Harry feared he knew what it was about. Even worse was the fact that a minor paradox would be created, which meant only one thing.

Suddenly, Harry doubled over onto his desk even before his past counterpart had answered the door. He felt as if his mind was getting split in two, one part contained the memories of the paperwork he had done, while other was something else entirely.

Meanwhile, outside the trunk, with Harry from 10 hours earlier.

"Sir, it's horrible!", Harry's assistant spoke. "The biggest crack yet just opened and a pack of predatory creatures came through. The casualties are in the thousands and still going up. The creatures are highly resistant to magic, even the bombardment hex does negligible damage. It looks as if they're hunting people for the fun of it!"

Harry furrowed his eyebrows and said: "Tell everyone that knows how to use it, in accordance with the ICW's kill on sight missive, I'm temporarily lifting the ban on the killing curse."

To himself, he thought 'damn bastards, they're there to meddle when you don't need them, and when you need one of those guys with the incinerator suit, they're nowhere to be seen.'

It was only on the next morning that Harry saw an article on the front page of the Daily Prophet: 'Hundreds of cracks open up in a single day worldwide: a coincidence of the start of something terrible?

Yesterday, the biggest incident of cracks opening in recorded history took place. There were more than three hundred incidents, many of them spewing forth extremely dangerous creatures that caused mass casualties before they were subjugated. The cause of the cracks has yet to be discovered.

For now, the only thing that can be done is sealing them once they've been found. Severus Snape, Britain's foremost Potions Master claims that he is working on a Potion that could temporarily seal the area around the crack. The potion would be useable by everyone, not just a person belonging to the ICW's taskforce.

We can only wait with bated breaths for such a potion to arrive, as it would definitely save many lives.'

Days passed just like that, and soon became months. Harry barely had any time to spend with his family. In just two months, he aged more than a year, courtesy of abusing the time-turner during office hours.

After three months of hellish struggle, things became quiet once again and people finally had the chance to mourn the fallen.

Yet, the respite only lasted for half a year.